


My Momma Always Told Me

by kisahawklin



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Drunk Castiel, Five Times, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Graphic Description of Injury, Hurt Dean Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Slash, Wingfic, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-26
Updated: 2013-09-26
Packaged: 2017-12-27 16:16:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/981001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kisahawklin/pseuds/kisahawklin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times hurt/comfort drunk!Cas Dean whump pre-slash wingfic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Momma Always Told Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Clavally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clavally/gifts).



> Not even sure what happened here; I wanted to write wingfic to cheer her up, and then when the words came, they were h/c and there were no wings in sight, and then I realized it was shaping up to be a five times thing, and then I just gave in and made it a mishmash of genres and tropes.

~~~

"What was it like, having a mother?" Cas asks.

They're standing in the doorway of the main room, watching Sam sleep with his head pillowed on his books. The nostalgia overwhelms Dean a little, watching Sam conked out like that, knowing he'll wake with the imprints of the pages on his cheek like he did when he was fourteen. 

"What do you mean?" Dean asks. He only had a mother for a little while, and he almost never thinks about her anymore. That in itself is a sad statement, and he has to look away from Cas for a second to get ahold of himself.

Cas pauses, the way he always does when he's trying to work out how best to explain himself to Dean. Dean grins. He can almost hear the wheels turning. "Sam said he never really had a mother, not like you did. He doesn't have any memories of her."

Dean nods, swallowing back the protectiveness that swells up in his throat.

"I also had no mother," Cas says, curiosity evident in his voice. Dean's glad to hear something that isn't flat disinterest, his reaction to nearly everything for the last several weeks. 

"You were never a kid, either," Dean answers, and then turns to look at Cas, because he's not actually sure about that. "Right? You were hatched full-grown?"

Cas smiles ruefully. "We were created in our final forms, yes. We did not have to grow or learn or be protected."

It's Dean's turn to smile ruefully. "Maybe that's the problem," he says. "Maybe if you had someone to kiss your knee when you scraped it or to sing you a lullaby before you went to sleep, you'd know what's so special about being human."

Cas hums thoughtfully. "You did those things for Sam when he was small."

Dean laughs. "Yeah, guess I did. I'm a poor substitute for a mom, though." As if he's listening, Sam shifts, spreading the books out a little further and settling his head on his arms.

"I think Sam would disagree," Cas says, turning his back on them and heading down the hallway to the room he chose as his own.

~~~

Dean doesn't know why, but he pauses at Cas's door on his way to bed. Cas always leaves the door to his room open, who knows why. Dean thought it was so he could hear if there was any noise in the bunker after they'd gone to sleep, but Cas sleeps more than either him or Sam, and nothing seems to wake him once he's under.

Dean can see Cas huddled under the covers, the blankets pulled up over half his face. Dean knows he gets cold sometimes, and he looks so pitiful, Dean can't help but stick his nose in. "You need another blanket?" Dean asks. They've got plenty, there's no reason for Cas to freeze at night.

Cas shakes his head. "I'm fine, thank you."

"You don't look fine," Dean says. "People only sleep like that when they're cold..." _Ah shit_ , he thinks. Missed that one. "...or when they're scared," he finishes, knowing that's the more likely problem, and here he is, standing next to Cas's bed like he can do something about it.

"I'm not scared, or cold," Cas says petulantly, doing a surprisingly good impression of a pouty twelve-year-old. His body is rigidly curled in on itself, natural protective instincts even in angels, seems like.

Dean sighs and sits on the edge of Cas's bed, making himself the center of the half-circle that Cas is curled around, just like his mom used to do when he was little. He starts to hum, _Stairway to Heaven_ because it's what he used to sing to Sammy, and cringes a little at how wrong it is, singing that to Cas.

Cas closes his eyes and his body unfurls just a little, enough for him to get comfortable. He flops onto his back somewhere in the second chorus, and Dean straightens the covers around him, not tucking him in, not exactly.

~~~

The next day they have a run-in with demons that leaves Cas bloodied and bruised. Sam comes out clean for once, and Dean only got kicked around a little – so little he doesn't even think he'll have bruises in the morning.

Sam brings out the med kit which is pretty much overkill for a few scrapes, but he just raises one eyebrow at Dean and inclines his head toward Cas. "I'll go grab some dinner," he says, swiping the keys to the Impala out of Dean's pocket with ease. "Be back in half an hour or so."

Cas tilts his head as he watches Sam leave. Dean's glad to have company in the "Sam's so weird" department. 

"I don't need this," Cas says, nodding his head at the med kit. "These are hardly injuries." He looks down at his scraped palms and forearms, road rash from trying to stop his momentum on the concrete floor of the warehouse. 

"We should disinfect them, though," Dean says, and takes the rubbing alcohol in hand. "This will probably sting."

Cas opens his mouth, probably to make a smart comment, but Dean pours the alcohol over the scrapes and whatever he was going to say comes out as, "Ahh, ow! Ouch! Dean, that hurts!"

Dean can't help the smile that creeps across his face. "Sorry." 

Cas scowls at him. "You are not sorry."

"Nah," Dean says, soaking a gauze pad in alcohol and carefully debriding the scrapes. "And this'll hurt worse."

Cas tries to pull his arm away, but Dean holds on. "Hang in there," Dean says. He's reminded of his dad doing this to him when he wiped out on a gravel road with his bike as a kid. Dad had blown on the skin after he finished cleaning each section of his torn up arms, the coolness a relief from the burn of the abrasions. Dean does the same to Cas, and when he finishes his work, he copies his dad again, planting a kiss in the center of Cas's left palm, the only part not completely ripped to shreds. 

"What was that for?" Cas asks, tilting his head at Dean now. 

Dean shrugs. "My dad used to say 'a kiss to make it better.'" 

Cas nods solemnly, like this makes perfect sense.

~~~

"My stomach is upset," Cas tells them, and Dean cringes. Stomachaches are the worst. He and Sam have iron constitutions after so many years on the road, so much crap food. Cas is weirdly delicate, his vessel picky if he gets too little meat or too few vegetables.

"Pepto?" Dean asks, and Cas groans. Medication sometimes backfires with Cas.

"Nap," Sam suggests, and Cas nods and shuffles off toward his room, hunched over with his shoulders up around his ears.

"You should go make sure he's okay," Sam says, nodding after Cas. 

"Why don't you?" Dean asks, miffed.

Sam shrugs. "Sure. But you're better at the back-rubbing thing." 

Dean has a sudden bright flashback to the winter of '96, when Sam came down with the flu for a couple of weeks and nothing Dean did made him feel any better. Dean'd called Bobby in a panic, and Bobby gave him the secret formula to making stomachaches bearable: rubbing Sam's back until he fell asleep. It had been the longest two weeks of Dean's life. 

Sam starts to get up, but Dean rolls his eyes and waves him off. "I got it." 

Cas is already spread out on his stomach when Dean gets to his room, his head hanging off the side of the bed. He moans pitifully. 

"Shh," Dean whispers, sitting on the side of the bed and hesitating with his hand hovering over Cas's back. Cas breathes out, a frustrated whine, and Dean settles his palm between Cas's shoulder blades, swiping his hand down Cas's spine and then back up, starting in circles when he reaches the top. He remembers the rhythm like it was yesterday, two big circles, a bunch of little ones all over his back, and back to the big ones. It's a simple dance and before long, Cas's breathing slows and then evens out into sleep. 

When he finally stops and extracts himself from Cas's bed, he sees Sam in the doorway, watching. 

"Shut up."

Sam looks like he's about to protest, the "uh" of annoyance already slipping out before Dean says, "Not a word."

Sam shrugs exaggeratedly and mimes zipping his mouth shut.

~~~

Dean's surprised at how long it takes for them to get Cas seriously drunk. He thought for sure Cas would want to get blitzed first thing after becoming human – and maybe stay that way for a few weeks afterward. He did try some whiskey when they got back to the bunker that first night, but he'd just made a face and put the tumbler down mostly-full.

Dean offers him whatever's on hand (mostly beer and whiskey) at regular intervals, but he doesn't seem to have a taste for either of them. They go out on a case and Cas puts down his first shifter, cause for celebration. They go out to a dive bar with busy tables and country western on the juke and Sam hustles pool while Cas sits at the bar and flirts with the bartender.

Dean doesn't even think to go check on him for the first hour or so, assuming things are going swimmingly, since the bartender seems to be hovering close by. It isn't until he sees Cas nearly fall sideways off his chair that he realizes things aren't going the way he expects. He leaves Sam to clean up and hurries over to the bar, one hand grabbing Cas's arm as he starts to lean dangerously to the left. "Dean," Cas says, smiling with all the good humor of a _lot_ of alcohol.

"You want another one?" the bartender asks as she comes back over. Her eyes travel over Dean and she leans in to ask, "And how about you? What can I do you for?"

"We're fine, thanks," Dean says, skipping the flirting because Cas can barely sit up so there's no use pretending he'll be getting lucky tonight. "What're you drinking there, Cas?"

"S'called a Pink Squirrel," Cas says, smiling even bigger. "Taaaaaasty."

"Your friend's a tough customer," the bartender – Pauline, 312-555-3942, according to the bar tab – says. "Picky about his drinks."

The tab is for sixty bucks, and Dean's just glad Sam had time to win some cash before Cas decided to get wasted. He leaves four twenties on the counter and turns Cas around on his stool, making him laugh. "Whooooo," he says, leaning into Dean as he slides off the stool. 

Cas is an easy drunk, happily singing in his tone-deaf voice until the lull of the car on the road makes him fall asleep. He doesn't wake up until Sam tries to haul him out of the back seat when they reach the batcave, six hours later.

"Aaaaaaaaugh," Cas groans, crawling out of the car and landing face first in the grass when his arms won't hold him up. "I feel ill."

"I bet you do," Dean says. "Come on, I have a guaranteed hangover cure."

Sam chuckles. "Guaranteed for you. It doesn't do shit for me."

"Probably because you're a damn giant," Dean says. "Get Cas inside and start him on the stairs." He heads straight for the kitchen, hoping he's stocked up on the essentials. It's been a long time since he had a hangover.

He throws together what he needs and brings it out to the main room, where Sam's watching Cas come down the stairs. "I don't understand why you are making me do this," Cas says, but when he gets to the bottom of the stairs, he turns around and goes back up.

"Ellen gave me this hangover cure," Dean says, remembering hanging on to the stairway railing for dear life while she cajoled him into going up and down the stairs one more time, and another, and another. "Works like a charm, I promise."

Cas grumbles something as he hits the bottom step and looks up at Sam with pleading eyes.

"That's five," Sam says, smiling fondly down at him. 

Five more trips up and down the stairs and Dean hands off the peanut butter and honey sandwich and bottle of Gatorade. Cas seems reluctant at first, but once he starts drinking the blue stuff, he reaches for the sandwich and finishes it off in five remarkably large bites. Dean hadn't realized before how big Cas's mouth was.

"Okay," he says, giving Cas the vitamin B. "This is the last thing before you go back to bed for a nap. You'll feel right as rain next time you wake up."

Cas takes the pills and swallows them with the last two glugs of Gatorade. "I don't understand what intrinsic value rain has to merit such high regard."

~~~

Dean can taste the blood as it rushes down the back of his throat. He's been fucked up before, at Cas's own hands, but this is worse. He can feel the broken cheekbone and jaw, the gurgle in his collapsed lung as he tries to breathe. He knows he's dying, and some small part of him is hoping this is really it – no more last ditch saves, no more fighting impossible battles to come back and find the next pile of steaming crap on his plate. Just silence. Sweet release.

The only thing wrong with hoping for death is that he'd be signing a death warrant for Sam and Cas too, since he knows there's no way Cas won't heal him if they survive that mess out there, and without Cas, Sam is just chasing shadows.

Dean lies still, closing his eyes when his vision narrows to the three feet in front of him. He tries to bring unconsciousness down on himself. He doesn't need to stick around for the whole gory show if he's going to die, and if Cas does save the day, he'd rather be unconscious until he gets healed. The fighting to breathe and overwhelming pain is too much.

The sounds of battle move away from him slowly. Dean listens harder and harder, trying to pick out Sam's Enochian recitation or Cas's barked orders. It isn't long before he can't hear anything except the sound of air scraping his throat as it tries to make its way into his lungs.

~~~

It feels like it's been days since he fell, but he knows it was probably less than twenty minutes. He's always had a good sense of time, even when it's shifting underneath him like it is now.

"Dean." Cas's voice is full of regret and pity. Maybe he's spent all his mojo and he won't be able to heal Dean after all.

"Sam?" Dean asks.

"I'm here," Sam says. Dean tries to open his eyes to see him, but his eyelids are so heavy, like someone hung tiny weights on his eyelashes. "You're going to be okay, Dean."

He doesn't really think so; if Cas hasn't healed him already, there's probably not a lot of hope for him. "Help me get him up," Cas says, hopefully to Sam because Dean lost feeling in his arms and legs a few miles back. He can feel someone gently trying to move him and he almost has to laugh – a little jiggling at this point can't make anything worse.

To Sam's credit, he actually gets Dean on his feet. He's pretty much holding Dean up by his armpits, but at least he's vertical. Dean finally opens his eyes, just in time to see Cas coming in for the mother of all hugs. He's not sure, but it looks like his wings are planning to join the party.

They'd been able to see Cas's wings since they got to heaven and stolen his grace back, the strange black shapes gracefully folded behind his back. All his human frailty is gone in this place, the divine warrior with his righteous sense of purpose. Dean doesn't know how he ever saw Cas as human, even without the grace.

The wings are outstretched but curving toward him, shepherding him into Cas's embrace. "Shhhh," Cas says when Dean opens his mouth to diffuse the awkwardness. "Let me show you something _my_ father taught _me_."

Dean keeps his silence and lets Cas surround him, his arms clasping Dean to him and the wings pulling him in tight, wrapping him up in a cocoon of silky feathers. It feels safe and warm and since his head is resting on Cas's shoulder, he doesn't even have to avert his eyes to make it less uncomfortable.

There's a slow ebb to the pain, like it's being siphoned off through one of those tiny straws they give you to mix cream into your coffee. In its place a sense of peace settles, and Dean has never felt anything like it. It's healing in slow motion; not just his injuries, but his soul-weariness. He hasn't felt this way since he and Sam first hit the road together; he feels _whole_.

He hears something he can't quite place until he realizes it's Cas, trying to sing. He's still tone-deaf, but there's no mistaking the words to _A Simple Man._

Dean smiles against Cas's shoulder, and when he can move his arms again, he snakes them around Cas's back and holds on tight.

~~~


End file.
